Greetings.

For no apparent reason, my wife's laptop restored all software to original factory settings. Microsoft Office is no longer installed, Explorer points to original welcome screen, etc. Desktop has reverted to original Dell logo.

The good news is that all her files are still there, including .pst for Outlook - even though Outlook no longer exists. And happily system restore does recognize numerous previous restore points, the most recent being 3 days ago.

The only thing we can think of is she made a rare visit to a non-secure hotspot about 10 days ago. Virus?